TeachOIT: a Blog for People Who Teach with Technology

Although YouTube’s terms of service still officially prohibit downloading. The weekly addresses and the announcements posted by Obama’s “ChangeDotGov” user on YouTube can now be downloaded. Look for a “Click to Download” link just below the Play button. (This link only appears on the YouTube page for the video, not when the video is embedded, such as on the change.gov site or a blog post.)

Example: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zd8f9Zqap6U

If you are interested in capturing presidential videos to edit and display in class, this is an opportunity to get them from YouTube without resorting to the shadier methods of capturing content from the site. If you are interested in capturing other content from YouTube, this is an interesting development. Perhaps we will soon see more public domain footage made available this way.

Stay tuned.

—

February 13, 2009 UPDATE: More groups are making their YouTube content available for download, some for free, some for a fee. See the official announcement from YouTube: “YouTube Goes Offline“

Kansas State Univeristy’s Michael Wesch present a fascinating overview of some of the history, trends, and themes observed as part of his ethnography of YouTube.

At 55 minutes this is  somewhat of a commitment to watch, you might want to wet your appetite  by checking out two short videos Wesch has made with his student that received a great deal of attention last year:

A Vision of Students Today

The Machine is Us/ing Us 

Read more about their project at:
http://mediatedcultures.net/youtube.htm 

Nearly lost among the funny animals, back yard science experiments, and music videos in YouTube are short videos that can be useful in the classroom. In some cases these are simply captured bits of pop culture or history that can be shown in class or embedded in course Web pages. There are also well-produced, short videos created by individuals and organizations on specific topics that can provide supplemental content to a course.

For example, this instructional video produced by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) giving tips for researchers who want to get better results with Google:

This video is also part of a longer series that the CBC has posted on YouTube. To view the entire “playlist” of Google tips go to:
http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=4884D513AC87454C

More useful YouTube examples:
(more…)

Cultural anthropologist Michael Wesch and 200 students at Kansas State University created a video about students in today’s college classrooms. It is an example of “digital storytelling” with an interesting mix of low tech (words on paper, chalkboard and walls) and high tech (time-lapse footage of a Google Doc being edited by the 200 students). It doesn’t offer any concrete solutions, but rather poses some though-provoking questions for anyone trying to reach 21st century students in a 19th century setting.

If you are interested in learning more about teaching the “Web” generation:
(more…)

(from the March 2007 Emerging Technologies and Pie Presentation)

Del.icio.us, Flickr, YouTube, and similar services, allow users to store their collections (of bookmarks, photos, videos, etc.) online. These files can be shared with individuals, groups, or the world. Each item can also be tagged with keywords supplied by the poster (or other users). This “folksonomy” is more casual than library indexing, and can be the source of interesting connections, or frustration. Such sites can provide an easy way to post and comment on course work, or can be an environment to look at what is being posted and tagged by the society at large.

(more…)